Project Nomads

There's a particular method of flight we can only ever perfect in dreams. It's that way of leaping vertically up from the ground and embarking on a serene and unrestrained airborne ballet. After that the dream might get rather surreal in that you are pursued by kipper-wielding nuns or everything turns into avocados, but let's not get into the details of my subconscious.

It's just one of those things that us clumsy humans could never hope to achieve in reality, but Radon Labs's jaw-droppingly beautiful Project Nomads comes tantalizingly close.

It's easy to see why this remarkably distinctive sci-fi adventure/RTS won best PC game at ECTS, aside from there not being much in the way of competition. The setting is truly innovative, a world of giant floating islands, the only fragments of the world left after an intergalactic war with giant alien insects. In fact, it'll probably be the next Kevin Costner movie. Populated by the Earth's last survivors, the islands are powered by a mixture of supernatural magic and Jules Verne-style technology. You play a flying wizard engineer, using arcane powers and a collection of ancient artifacts that turn your flying island into a mean, green fighting machine, with the eventual aim of taking over other islands in the batde for solid ground.

The islands can be reinforced with factories, power plants and various defence systems, as well as being customised with flowers, trees, maybe even shrubbery... with a path (a path!). Basically it becomes your own floating, killing Garden of Eden. A real-time day/night cycle, along with changing weather conditions such as wind and lightning, add to the all-round beauty of the game, which looks set to rival Black & White in the 'wow' department. You could say it's the game Sacrifice should have been.
The skies around the islands are your battleground, and in the distance rival islands drift like sunbathing whales through the billowing clouds, surrounded by buzzing zeppelins and biplanes.
Once you gain sufficient technology you too can gain control of such bizarre flying machines, taking rest from flying under your steam to do some real damage.

The developers are promising to create a seamless, organic environment, with no loading time between areas, thereby creating a hugely accessible world. The multiplayer aspect also looks intriguing, and features the ability to take your single-player islands online, enabling you to embark on some inter-island warfare.

Jules Verne had it right when he said, "Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real," and with Project Nomads Radon Labs is defiantly trying to make the stuff of dreams and wild imaginations a reality. Apart from the nuns and avocados, of course.